The Territories

Part 1

Chapter 1

Fausto Orellana was on his way back from the tienda to his private investigator office. He moved slowly through what was now one of the biggest and crime ridden cities in the world, *******************, when his eye caught something that called his attention. A government cleaning robot the size of a small dog going in circles around a dead chicken.

Fausto sat down on a bench, lit a cigarette and watched the spectacle. The entrails of the dead chicken had wrapped themselves around the wheel axis of the robot, blocking one wheel entirely. Fausto knew exactly what that chicken had been used for, an Umbanda ritual. Or Quimbanda, more likely, you could never know for sure. Such rituals weren’t new around here, he had seen such things even as a child long before the war. But the sacrificed chicken and the robot together caught up in an involuntary, macabre dance was something he had never seen before.

The clash of opposites was striking, on the one hand the robot, hard, mechanical, a product of science and technology, on the other hand the soft chicken with a cut throat, sacrificed and placed at a crossroads, probably as an offering to Exu, the deity of communication, the streets, especially intersections, and of the connection between the spiritual and the profane. When Fausto was a child such offerings were usually stolen by street dogs, but there weren’t any dogs anymore in *******. Instead there were robots and drones, roaming the streets, making deliveries, guarding properties, scanning, collecting trash.

But what struck Fausto most wasn’t the contrast between the robot and the chicken, it was the things they had in common. The reason all those robots were even still around after the war was due to one discovery, the grid. A dimension of energy that exists parallel to our familiar dimensions. Without it there wouldn't be anywhere near enough energy to run the world. The grid had always been there, right in front of us, all around us, even, but it took a long time to discover it. Obviously the discovery didn’t lead to free energy, a handful of families controlled access to the grid, but at least it lead to cheap and readily available energy.

That robot ran on the energy coming from another dimension. And Umbanda is all about different dimensions as well. Practitioners move through the dimensions, from the physical to the spiritual. Or at least that’s what they think, Fausto was skeptical about it, like he was skeptical about most things. The robot was moving through the city powered by a different dimension nobody knew existed a couple of years ago, the chicken was placed by the intersection by someone who moved between dimensions and petitioned the spirits to guard the crossing. In a way, the few families who controlled access to the grid were similar to those spirits. They controlled the crossing and you had to give them offerings to get access. Exu demanded a dead chicken, flowers, old coins and fruits, the Grid cartel demanded digital government coins.

Fausto still had great memory. It was the one thing he could rely on. Pretty much everything he had ever read was readily available in his mind, stored in a big and well ordered mental library. He knew that Exo was the guardian of the crossroads. In some ways he reminded Fausto of Hieram Abiff in Freemasonry, who was also killed by ruffians for not giving up his secrets. And death wasn’t the end for either of them, instead it made them stronger, turned them into guardians of the crossroads, initiatory figures, controlling the border between the material world and the spiritual world.

The robot had now begun to wind the entrails around another wheel, which pulled it in even closer, the circles becoming so small now that it was already touching the corps of the chicken at certain phases of its orbit. Fausto inhaled the smoke and placed a bet in his mind: who would win this fight, the chicken or the robot? He put his mental money on the chicken. The robot was the underdog at this point. The sound of the motor changed to a higher pitch, corresponding to the hopelessness of the situation. The entrails were wrapped around tight like a Boa Constrictor around its prey. But the robot managed a surprising come-back. As soon as it was pulled completely towards the chicken the entrails snapped, the robot was free, made a swift turn back to its predetermined route and just kept moving like nothing had happened. The chicken, all dirty and bloody, stayed behind, the entrails hanging out like a fuse.

“Damn. I knew it!”

Fausto was about to get up and be on his way just like the cleaning robot, but something else caught his attention. A man in his thirties walking by hastily. No goggles, no helmet, no earphones, at least no visible ones. He seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place him. He watched him walk by the chicken without paying it any attention. Tall, athletic, short dark hair. Dark baseball cap. Hardened face, piercing eyes. The color of his skin hinted at a nocturnal lifestyle. Probably ex-military, Fausto decided. Most likely someone he had sent to the front. He almost remembered his name, but it was just too long ago even for his memory. There were just too many names during that time. Fausto’s face turned into a grimace when he remembered that he just lost a bet in his mind.

War memories flooded his head with such force and immediacy that he lost connection to reality for a moment. He threw away the cigarette, wiped the images off his face and got up. Not now. Not out here. Not in public. He needed to get home. He grabbed the bag with the cigarettes and whiskey from the tienda and started walking. Only a couple of cuadras more.